Login

Telangana shuns Pradhan olive branch

Oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan's two and a half day visit to India's newly carved out states of Telangana and Seemandhra (Andhra Pradesh) in the last week of June wasn't successful politically.

Telangana chief minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao of the TRS party, who is sulking because the ruling BJP has thrown its support behind Seemandhra chief minister Chandrababu Naidu of the TDP party, refused to meet Pradhan.

"Pradhan had a breakfast meeting with Naidu at Vishakhapatnam on June 25," says a Hyderabad source. Before leaving for Delhi on June 26, he was scheduled to meet Rao for lunch.

"But an angry Rao refused to take Pradhan's calls and cancelled the meeting," we hear. Rao, hiding at his farmhouse on the outskirts of Hyderabad, wasn't even enticed by Pradhan's promise at a press conference on June 26 that the ministry would invest Rs1300cr ($203m) in Telengana.